Featured Tracks:

Smokepurpp’s DEADSTAR is an album that captures the sound of the moment. That’s neither a criticism nor a compliment. Its tempered-aggro style has a certain rawness to it, and it would be difficult to call it calculated. But it’s also not apt to surprise. His debut promises and delivers about what one could expect from a 20-year-old rapper in the right place (Florida) at the right time (now) stumbling dead-eyed over the zeitgeist. DEADSTAR is a consistent exercise in competence, of interest mainly for its proximity to the energy of this exact second.

Smokepurpp rose up from SoundCloud’s drug-addled underground, elevated in part thanks to his friendship with star, collaborator, and half-meme/half-man Lil Pump. Lil Pump short-circuits lots of things that make rap interesting, suggesting that the parodic repetition of tropes is really all the music needs to be about. Occasionally, he’s momentarily convincing. But Smokepurpp doesn’t convey the same sense of embodying a living exaggeration, and his personality feels slight, by contrast.

Nonetheless, the album’s greatest strengths are the novelty of its sound and Purpp’s ability to fit himself to that template without rocking the boat. Producer Ronny J, a New Jersey-born beatmaker who produces almost half of the album, is largely responsible for the former. His beats split the difference between the subtler, more musically adroit compositions of producer Pierre Bourne and the aggressive, bass-shredding bombast of XXXTentacion’s scene breakthrough “Look At Me!” That song serves as a blueprint for records like Smokepurpp’s “Audi,” for which Ronny J serves up a slab of thundering bass and harsh distortion.

With a beefier sound than Bourne, and an ear for rough-edged timbral and textural choices, Ronny J understands how best to complement the edgy, rock-inflected style of this new wave. The beats have a swaggering, macho affect, and the bass is mixed as if the speakers themselves can’t hold it. Songs by other producers reflect a similar tone; on the Ice Bream-produced “Bless Yo Trap,” each bar is punctuated with a red-alert siren and an echoing shot that slowly decays in the acrid atmosphere. (The occasional nursery-rhyme hook or carousel-like cadence can overlay whimsy atop this ominous canvas, giving songs a demented tint.) Though Ronny’s beats are sophisticated in some respects, the effect is the opposite: a bludgeoning, percussive, atmosphere-rending sound that aims to unsettle. It takes a sleeker, strip-club-oriented template and scuffs it, letting the wear and tear show.

This fits the entire rebellious pose of the movement; DEADSTAR’s cover is an homage to the funeral of semi-renowned shock-rock artist GG Allin, whose transgressive reputation (if not his music) has recently taken on portentous significance in hip-hop’s collective Pinterest mood board. The content throughout the album reflects Smokepurpp’s stated M.O.: “ignorance,” which feels like a headlong, punk-rock embrace of aimless self destruction, shaped by the shock-realism of the drill wave: “Off the lean, like a kickstand, can’t feel anything/Got a full clip I’m busting everything.” There’s lots of drugs, and guns, and sex, and cash. Its an album of undirected transgressions, and the effect is less thrilling than numbing. It’s tough to determine when that is a purposeful tonal choice or a default stance driven by a lack of imagination.

Smokepurpp’s style of rapping is straightforward, under-stylized, and unencumbered by the obligations of artistic self-consciousness. Why should he be, when the most successful streaming rap artist of the moment—Post Malone—is a massive, scalable triumph simply by repeating a series of unbelievable rap cliches? Similarly, Purpp’s lyrics seldom escape overfamiliar generality. It’s not that he’s not believable; it’s that each line takes a well-worn path, offering little to hang onto, little to distinguish it from earlier artists’ truths: novelty, principles, humor. In the second half of DEADSTAR, Smokepurpp’s sound begins to open up a bit, showing more musical range as the melodies creep in. It’s a smart move, to keep him from being painted into a corner by the of-the-moment sound that has defined him so far, particularly when there are bigger stars in that lane.

Yet rather than a developing a melodic approach, it’s his rapping (and writing) that could offer the greatest opportunity to redefine his sound in the wake of the Florida/SoundCloud rap takeover. This album offers little beyond its surface, though that surface is crafted with capable efficiency. What’s missing are those idiosyncrasies which suggest an artist honing his voice, pushing himself into more uncomfortable places, channeling his curiosity in the pursuit of a new creative path, or simply broadening his range by experimenting with the genre’s wide toolkit. These come with experience and applied passion. He’s a new artist, young and unproven, but he’s built a large audience. Optimistically, this is an opportunity for Smokepurpp, a ramp which will lead to a deepening of his stylistic acumen. Or it won’t.